Chapter 296: Predator

Zach smiled while looking at his gloves and said, "They feel the same as I wore them for the first time."

"I tried my best repairing them," Xie Lua stated.

"You mean, with love?" Zach teased with a grin.

"Wha—!" Xie Lua's face turned red as she gritted her teeth out of flustration.

Zach grinned even more after seeing her reaction and let out a soft chuckle.

"Do you always tease the other girls like this?"

Zach shrugged his shoulders and said, "You will have to come and see it with your own eyes."

"Hmm. I don't think I can enter the game, though," Xie Lua muttered.

"You can't?"

"I can open the portal to the game, you know?"

"Hmm. So it's just like how Aria's domain works. Even though she gave me the token to open the portal to her domain, she herself can't open it because of the restrictions and limitations of her powers due to the Gods' Impact, while she can open the portal from the inside because the domain is not the part of the game, but connected to it," Zach murmured.

"…."

"Have you ever tried entering the game?" Zach asked curiously.

Xie Lua shook her head and said, "No, and I don't intend to. I am a merchant, and I would like it if I remain a merchant. I don't want to interact with something created by the gods who want to end the world."

After a brief pause, she said, "I am Xie Lua, the universal merchant of all the worlds and realms, nothing more."

Zach conjured a dagger in his hands and muttered, "Yeah, it's working."

"You should learn to use your powers with the help of the gloves," Zie Lua remarked.

"But they make me strong. Without them, I wouldn't have made this far, you know?"

"What do you mean? The gloves are only mere weapons. They don't contribute anything to your success," Xie Lua asserted. "If you give a sharp sword to a 5-year-old kid, he wouldn't be able to fight, but if you give a dull sword to a 15-year-old, he would still fight and even win depending on the opponent."

"…"

"Similarly, these gloves are useless without you. Even when I was wearing them, I couldn't use them to their full potential," she added, "In fact, no one would be able to use the gloves as you used them."

"But that's because father made them for me, right?"

"Yes, but only to help you use your powers and learn them." Xie Lua looked into Zach's eyes and said, "These gloves are hindering your true powers. You can do everything you do with the gloves, even without the gloves. That's why I said you need to learn to use your powers without gloves."

"Wait, wait, wait…" Zach raised his brows and asked, "Are you telling me that I have been doing everything with my own strength and not the gloves?"

"Did I stutter?"

"Wow…"

Zach felt happy after knowing that his progress was not because of the gloves but because of his own powers.

"Thank you for telling me this. Now I am brimming with confidence!"

"You are welcome. It's a duty of a wife to please her husband, am I right?" Xie Lua said with a grin on her face.

Zach leaned forward and kissed Xie Lua on the lips before saying, "See you tomorrow."

After that, Zach left the magic shop dimension and walked around the capital to gain information about the seven members' party.

"Weird. I was expecting to get information about them as such cases always get rumored around. But they are not…" Zach muttered in confusion and kept walking.

Meanwhile, in some forest on the second realm, seven players were sitting on the trees. Out of the seven, five were males, and two were females.

"Tch! No prey today, it seems," one of them said.

"Don't jinx it!" the second yelled.

"Yeah, the day has just started," the third said.

"Screw all that. What are we going to do about the two kids from yesterday?" the fourth asked.

"I thought they would enter the dungeon, and we would set them in a trap, just like we did with our prey. But who knew they were so smart to not enter and run away!" the fifth yelled.

"I think they weren't smart. They were just cowards who couldn't dare to enter even the first floor of the dungeon," the sixth uttered.

"Yeah, that has to be it!" the seventh seconded.

"So what are we going to do about them? I went to kill them last night and followed them. Luckily, I found them sleeping in the garden, completely defenseless. But the girl suddenly woke up and ruined everything. Then, they ran towards the church, so I backed away. After all, I didn't want to catch attention."

"Just admit that you chickened out."

"I didn't!"

"Even if you had chased them, no one would have seen you. It was night, and no players were around at that time."

"But some NPCs are. And what about the nun at the church? What if—"

"Who cares about the worthless NPCs. I kill them for fun whenever I run into them in empty streets."

"Let's go kill the two kids and the nun tonight!"

"Yeah. But hey, have you seen that nun. She is quite hot~"

"I know, right? Damn, her boobs are so big! I want to sleep on them!"

"Hey, hey! How about we have some fun with her before killing her? It should be satisfying, right?"

"Now that you mentioned it. I haven't gotten laid in a week."

"Well, if we are going to r*pe the nun, let's do that to the little girl too. I heard little girls are—"

SLASH! SLASH!

As they all were talking, a sharp strike chopped the surrounding trees, and they all dropped to the ground.

Some were even crushed beneath the branches.

"What happened?!"

"A monster?!"

SLASH! SLASH!

With another strike, all of their bodies were chopped their body parts into pieces.

"It's breakfast time, Cerberus."

***

Total players in the game- 1,482,593

0 new players logged in.

7 players died.